


empty glasses, once filled

by WeAreTomorrow



Series: What Are We If Not Liars? [2]
Category: Ocean's (Movies), Ocean's Eleven (2001)
Genre: Card Games, Coping, Europe, M/M, Unrequited Love, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-05
Updated: 2013-04-05
Packaged: 2017-12-07 14:23:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/749513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeAreTomorrow/pseuds/WeAreTomorrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rusty attempts to move on after Danny retires.</p><p>It's not working.</p>
            </blockquote>





	empty glasses, once filled

XXX

 

_…I need to leave before I suffocate myself in you…_

 

XXX

 

They say if you love something, let it go. (Bullshit.)

 

Rusty doesn't believe in happy endings.

 

They say if it loves you, it’ll come back. Rusty knows better. Don't love in the first place, that's his advice, don’t fall for it. Hearts, like rules and promises, are just meant to be broken.

 

"It's not logical," he insisted, knocking the gin back with a grimace. It’s unfounded, the suggestion that he’s not coping. He’s here on a date, isn’t he?

 

"Endings are the end of something,” he says aloud, gesturing for a refill. What he really wants are the blueprints, wants to rexamine the internal flaws that have led them here; his emotions are fluctuating, erratic, spilling over the high walls he’s built up for exactly this purpose, “As in no more. Finite. Basta. How is that happy?"

 

Another drink is placed on the table. He reaches for it slowly, his hand steady.

 

"Every ending is the beginning of something new,” his date says, “Something better."

 

Rusty sucks in a sharp breath. Ouch.

 

"He doesn't get to do that. He doesn't just get to decide that it's over."

 

(It's not fair.)

 

"He doesn't get to just _stop_."

 

Gentle fingers pry the glass from his hands. And yes, they're shaking. Congra- _fucking_ -lations.

 

"He loved me."

 

Rusty thinks what he needed was vaccination, so that his immune system could’ve been braced. It’s the unexpected impact of facts that makes him feel so nauseated, the sudden acceleration of worst-case scenarios into motion sickness. The symptoms are unmistakable.

 

"Why wasn’t it enough?”

 

 

XXX

 

Danny is his best friend, if you bothered to ask him.

 

Most people don’t.

 

They assume or they don’t assume and that’s fine with Rusty because ‘best friend’ leaves a funny taste in his mouth. Like the past due-date yogurt he finds in the back of the refrigerator and swallows down anyway because he’s broke and hungry and it’s all he can afford at the time.

 

Ask him now and he’s not sure what he would say.

 

(It _hurts_.)

 

“A friend,” he might say, “An old business partner.”

 

Except he wouldn’t because putting Danny in the past tense is something he tries to avoid at all costs.

 

He’s rich now and all this means is that he knows money can’t cure everything. Certainly not food poisoning.

 

 

XXX

 

He gets the call a few hours earlier then expected.

 

“’Lo,” he mumbles into the phone, voice gritty with sleep, “Something wrong?”

 

Danny breathes out on the other side and Rusty tenses. His silence is all wrong, too stretched in the middle and bursting with unsaid things, secrets and regrets and maybe, maybe even disappointment.

 

“It’s so…” Danny says and stops himself.

 

 _I warned you_ , he wants to say, bitterly.

 

“I know,” the other man sighs over crackling static, “You did.”

 

 _You could come back_ , he thinks. Offers.

 

Silence on the other end, wistful this time. Missing him then, surrounded by his smiling wife and their new life, the straight jacket one that is cutting off their circulation. Every action has a reaction. Rusty is simply collateral.

 

 _You aren’t going to_ , he knows. Understands.

 

(Liar.)

 

XXX

 

See, there is his Danny and there is Tess’ Danny.

 

A simple coin toss. A roll of the dice.

 

But he’s never been so good at letting cards fall the way they should, the way chance would like them to. He’s never been good at giving up, at watching things walk away from him. And in this game, the odds are in his favor.

 

Danny is, to the core, a thief.

 

A liar and a cheat and a con and, most importantly, the best man he’s ever met.

 

That’s why it hurts so much. Because Rusty is everything that Danny breathes. And he walked away, like it wasn’t enough. He could make Danny come back. He could ask for help, say _please_. Maybe if he said the words, the three that he thought weren’t necessary… But, you see, that’s the problem. Rusty wants him to be happy, wants him to regret nothing, to live life to the fullest capacity and if Tess, that woman, the one he hates but can’t actually because she makes the goddamn bastard _so happy_ , is the answer to that then, okay.

 

He can live with that. It’s just, slightly unexpected.

 

It’ll just take some getting used to. He needs to let Danny go, needs to see if he comes back.

 

He was always shit at taking his own advice anyway.

 

XXX

 

So, Rusty goes looking for distraction.

 

He finds it.

 

Saul invites him up to Canada with some old friends and if he does it out of pity, well, he hides it too well for Rusty to know. It’s fun, all chivalry and friendship, chilled bourbon and Brazilian card games. They play with partners and he loses for the first time in years, outmaneuvered and waiting for back up to step in. For the calculated kill strike, the second line of defense.

 

It doesn’t come, how could it, undiscussed and barely within the rules, conceived in a hot flash of swallowed vodka years ago in a hotel lobby not unlike this one. When Rusty excuses himself with good humor, with a perfect smile, from the next round, it’s not pity he sees in Saul’s eyes. It’s pain.

 

He leans against the bar and closes his eyes.

 

“Hello sweetie.”

 

Rusty opens his eyes to the sight of bare, crossed legs. His gaze travels upward—to the red dress, the hint of cleavage, the full lips—and follows the casual toss of dark hair over an exposed shoulder. She bares her teeth in a smile and he suppressed the urge to swallow.

 

“Nicole,” she says.

 

“Jeremy,” Rusty lies and shakes her hand.

 

Saul slips a room key into his pocket on the way out.

 

XXX

 

The job is over, but Rusty lingers in the aftermath.

 

The four of them part like perfect gentleman, like legitimate citizens, exchanging business cards and promises. Rusty can feel the static electricity of possibility as they shake hands, the rumbling thrill of the next con in the distance. He doesn’t worry about the outlines of the next job, distant as it is. He’s a connect-the-dots kind of guy, a color-in-the-lines kind of guy, or, more often, outside of it. Those were the real highs, the ones they were known for. Rusty likes how the way the word _impossible_ melts away on the tongue, irresistible and overly sweet.

 

Saul hugs him outside the airport and looks him in the eye, face set.

 

“If you ever need anything,” he demands, “Anything at all.”

 

Rusty nods, agreeing.

 

Saul glances back at the passenger seat where Nicole sits, looking up with expectant eyes, wearing a t-shirt that isn’t hers. Finally, he pats Rusty on the shoulder and steps away, swallowing whatever words he wanted to say, shaking his head.

 

(Be careful.)

 

“Good luck, Rusty.”

 

They stay up all night, him and Nicole. Until dawn breaks over messy sheets, coaxing long shadows from their hiding places. He presses her wrists into the headboard and she bites him; it’ll hurt tomorrow, which is the point.

 

She curls against his chest and falls asleep. Rusty stares up at the ceiling.

 

XXX

 

“So, what’s her name?”

 

Rusty shouldn’t be surprised that Danny knows, but it catches him off-guard.

 

“Why?” He asks, because it’s the first thing that comes to mind.

 

Crackling static on the other end but Rusty thinks he hears _because I care_ and hangs up before he can be sure. He doesn’t need this right now.

 

 _Fuck you_ , he thinks angrily, _for making this so hard_.

 

XXX

 

He stays another week.

 

Toronto is a nice city, full of food. He eats more donuts then probably recommendable and Nicole sucks the sugar off his tongue. When they aren’t pressed against the granite of her kitchen counter or the closed door of a hotel elevator, she shows him the city. They take pictures in all the tourist places; on a Thursday they make out in front of the Niagara Falls while a scandalized old woman takes their picture.

 

Thanking her, Rusty takes the camera back and wipes the spit off his lower lip.

 

The act is convincing, this hormonal teenage love they wrap themselves up in. So innocent in its appearance of physical infatuation. But when the lights are off, he presses his wrist against hers and their heartbeats are too slow. Nicole cries when he packs his bags, mascara lines harsh against her white skin and unsettling, like war paint. Like a cracked mirror, reflection broken and unsettling as she asks him to _think this through_.

 

He kisses her forehead, her arms around his neck and it feels like the most honest thing they’ve done.

 

XXX

 

Rusty finds himself in Hawaii.

 

He’s not sure why; it’s a forgetting kind of heat, heavy, stirring liquid memories together in nonsensical directions. The outcome seems so obvious now, flavored bittersweet with hindsight. The memories are easier to stomach this way, when the words don’t match up, like bad Chinese action flicks where the mouths never stop moving.

 

(“I’m sorry.” “I’m leaving.” “I love her.”)

 

It’s been almost a fortnight before he realizes that he’s not actually staying anywhere, that he doesn’t even have his own hotel room. He wonders how many people he’s slept with and decides not to overanalyze.

 

Still, he loses focus, not responding to his fake names or the invitations from the shower.

 

He learns to surf instead. It doesn’t hurt that his instructor is beautiful. Gracefully balanced in her height, hair naturally sun bleached and falling down to her elbows. Her name is Danielle. Rusty smiles and follows her home.

 

“Rusty,” she whispers in his ear, “Wake up.”

 

He groans and rolls over onto his side, thin linen sheets twisted around his naked body and soaked with sweat. Danielle is wearing nothing but a pink thong and, suddenly, he is much more awake.

 

“Morning snog?” He asks because he’s pretending to a Brit on holiday.

 

She giggles and obliges.

 

“You know,” she says, straddling him, “I haven’t been called that since I was little.”

 

She tucks her long hair behind one ear and the generous view distracts him. He hums his appreciation in the back of throat and tries to remember what they are talking about. It’s late morning, the smell of fried dough wafting in through an open window from the street and Rusty decides he could get used to this. It’s not like he has other commitments. He could stay; why not?

 

“Been called what?”

 

“Danni.”

 

XXX

 

Rusty falls asleep on the plane, not knowing where he’s going to wake up.

 

He ends up in South Carolina.

 

XXX

 

"So,” Rusty asks, pressing ice against his swollen right eye, “I was thinking…”

 

Things haven't been so great lately. In fact, they've been pretty bad. Last night, he was working the angles at a low-end casino. It’s a low brow operation, no fireworks, no static electricity. It consists of him alone, twiddling his thumbs, trying desperately to keep himself entertained. It’s not really working, but hey. He had four years to figure that out. Now, he’s just treading water. It’s been two months and he’s tired.

 

He misses the important clues, the telltale cues, and when the sharks circle him in the back alley when he walks home, Rusty hands over the money and takes the punch with squared shoulders. He needs to get used to being alone, damn it. Readjust, watch his own back instead of keeping an eye out for someone that isn’t there.

 

“I should come and visit you next month since I'm in the area,” he says and wishes he hadn’t.

_No contact_ , he’d promised himself, _cold turkey_.

 

But it’s hard to take back when he can taste Danny’s misery souring like old yogurt on the other end. Like the answer to a question he hasn’t asked yet or the wish he didn’t make on the shooting star that went by someone else’s window. He doesn’t need to ask, this is his job, remember—predicating reality. His fists clench around the icepack as he hears the intake of relief, slight and stifled like he’s not allowed to be.

 

Danny should live in the spaces between consequences, in the gap between justice and law.

 

Rusty is the one living with gravity.

 

"Sorry Rus'," Danny says, sounding sick, brittle and breakable. “But next month probably won't work out. Work stuff, you know."

 

He’s lying. Rusty knows he’s lying.

 

( _Ouch_.)

 

He hangs up and turns his phone off.

 

XXX

 

Paris, that’s where he ends up this time. Just to rub salt in the wound, and lemon juice.

 

“Monsieur?” A vendor tugs at his sleeve and Rusty turns away from the view and blinks back tears from the cold bite of wind. The world blurs and focuses in city colors, shaded in fog. The vendor is pressing a basket of roses into his empty hands, grinning enthusiastically.

 

“For ‘ze lover, no?” The man’s accent is too thick, fake as Rusty’s stick-on goatee.

 

He buys three roses—white—because the picture of the vendor’s kids in his wallet is real and he can afford it. It seems he never does anything with his money anymore but drink and buy clothes nobody is around to laugh at.

 

“Au revoir,” Rusty says, and tosses the flowers off a bridge.

 

He doesn’t wait to see them hit the water’s surface. That’s the funny thing about gravity, you know? It’s there, constant and dependable, a downward pull, keeping you sane and orientated. (And then it’s not.)

 

Rusty stays in Paris longer than necessary, just to prove himself he can. He leaves gratefully, like a man breaking ties with an unfortunate mistress, a miscalculation of factors, like how much her nails will burn when she digs them into his back. And then, a few miles outside of the city center, in the empty spaces between Paris and the country’s border, Rusty stumbles across something wonderful.

 

A card trick he doesn’t know.

 

Dirt poor, with yellow tombstone teeth and a bulging nose, an old sailor sits on the corner of sidewalk and shuffles a deck of cards. He has blue collar hands. When he slices the deck it’s not poetic, not breath-taking. The sailor has no delicacy, fingers hardened like leather. Rusty can tell a lot about someone by the way they hold a deck. There is little romance in the sailor’s shuffling of spades and hearts and Jacks. But there is certainly respect.

 

“Garçon!” The old sailor calls out from his curb, “Un jeu?”

 

It’s been a long time since he’s been called a boy. The old sailor gestures with a virginal deck, her corners not yet rough, to reinforce his question. _A game_ , Rusty thinks, and sits down on the curb as well. The sailor splays the cards; an offering.

 

He’s always loved this part. Running a fingertip along the options, in that moment of infinite outcomes before a card is chosen, feeling the thin plastic edges against his skin. There has always been romance in the shuffle of Kings and Queens and diamonds, for him. His respect comes from reverence, from the breathlessness of choosing the right card again and again and again.

 

It’s not cheating if you do it right. Then it’s art.

 

“Un croyant,” the sailor notes, as Rusty touches the splayed deck.

 

Rusty nods, because he is nothing if not a believer, in romance and improbable outcomes and the justifications for cheating. The sailor winks, “Un cadeau, puis?”

 

Rusty nods again, to be polite. He doubts the man can teach him anything new.

 

He is wrong.

 

(This is _art_.)

 

 

XXX

 

He stays in Europe a while, refreshing his language skills.

 

Rusty is a different person for everyone he meets, with a different matching smile for every personality. None of them are real, except the one for the girl who manages to steal his wallet from his front pocket. Not bad for a seventeen-year-old. He teaches her his new card trick and she gives him the wallet back. There’s no money in it but that’s not the point.

 

“Warum?” He asks her, _why_. She shrugs, tugging at her long braid thoughtfully.

 

“Es macht Spass,” she says, “It be fun.”

 

“It _is_ fun,” he corrects.

 

She sticks her candy-purple tongue out at him, wrinkling her nose. Because, what better reason is there?

 

He gives her his business card and she buys him a beer.

 

 

XXX

 

Rusty changes his answering machine one night, on a train headed toward Switzerland. It’s running late, funnily enough, and the sun sets like background music. He changes it quickly, like pulling off a band-aid or knocking back a shot.

 

It’s not cheating, okay? It’s just, coping.

 

 

XXX

 

Another plane flight to somewhere. Rome, this time.

 

He meets Isabella in a bar.

 

She speaks to him first, between shots of something that smells like stale bread. Rusty notices that she’s a cop first, then that she’s lonely. Sometime later, he also realizes that she’s beautiful. The awareness sparks alive in him like an electrical shortage as their gazes skitter by each other, her eyes lingering over his face. He blinks, feeling blinded, side-tracked .

 

“Who are you missing?” She asks, handing him a glass.

 

“Can you miss something you never had?” Rusty counters, drunk enough to be introspective. He gulps down the offered drink and gestures for another round.

 

They drink for a long time, speaking carefully in non-specifics before she takes him home.

 

She only loosens his tie after unbuttoning his shirt; he likes that but can’t say why. He expects her to become shy, like most people do, as he unzips her dress to the ground. Instead, she tilts her chin up and kisses him.

 

“It’s okay if you don’t use my name,” Isabella says, honestly.

 

They don’t say anything at all after that, wallowing in breathlessness.

 

Rusty has breakfast cooked by the time she groans awake, curling away from the sunlight. He likes the shapes her body twists into, likes the strength in the arch of her back. He counts her vertebra as she leans over the bed, rummaging for a shirt. She doesn’t wear his, which he likes. Again, he’s not certain why.

 

“Hope you like omelets,” he says, nervous.

 

Her eyes close as she bites into it, groaning in the back of her throat. He thinks he could fall in love with the sound, if he gave himself the chance. Isabelle licks her fork when she’s done and looks at him, “Stay awhile?”

 

He moves in a few weeks later.

 

They are more alike then is typically practical. Isabelle has no delusions about him, except for what he does. It’s easy in unexpected ways, being together. She never tries to talk to him about the past and he never questions the empty spaces left in her confession, _I miss my father, sometimes_.

 

They eat good food, have great sex and work opposite ends of the law.

 

 

XXX

 

He switches on his phone, the day of their two month anniversary.

 

Rusty is dressed in a baby-blue tuxedo, buttoning his silver cuff links. He’ll be meeting Isabella at the restaurant, a small family-owned eatery nestled in the ruins of a greater civilization.

 

 _Your inbox is full_ , his phone informs him, with unnecessary snark.

 

He clicks through messages of cramped silence until his head hurts. _I’m sorry_ , one of them says, _I fucked up_. They all taste bitter, sour, short of breath and patience and answers. Danny could always ask the right questions but it was him with the solution.

 

(He doesn’t have answers for this, okay?)

 

Listening to all the messages again is unnecessary but it’s the pause before deleting each one that makes him late.

 

“Sorry, traffic.” He lies easily, sliding into the seat opposite her in the candlelit corner where she sits alone, face turned melancholy by imagination or by the shadows, “Hope you weren’t waiting too long.”

 

“Not long at all,” she lies back. Chin propped up on her elbows, Isabella kisses him affectingly, teasing with a hint of slippery tongue, “Distance makes the heart grow fonder, no?”

 

“Not planning on leaving me, are you?” He teases back.

 

Exactly two weeks later he climbs out their bathroom window, never expecting to see her again.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
